Complete Newbie seeks help with multiple NIC!

[Stumplington]

Hello! I'm completely new to ProxMox and virtualisation in general apart from messing around with VirtualPC probably a decade ago. I've only just worked out how to move ISO's to the ProxMox host and create VM's with default values. Everything seems to be getting networked through just one network interface.

I have an old PC with an i5 3570K, 32Gb RAM, onboard realtek NIC, an Intel Pro Quad Port Gigabit adapter, and a Mellanox Connect-X 2 10Gb adapter. Internet is delivered as as 1.2Gb/s cable if I can use both ports on the cable modem and configure it to aggregate ports both on the modem, my PFsense install to aggregate two ports each for WAN and LAN, and then set two ports to aggregate on the Switch to then connect LAN. Everything connected to that switch at 10Gb/s can then get the full 1.2Gb/s internet connection.

There are five SSD's in the system. and a hybrid 6Tb controller that I like to access at high speed for backups for the other machines on the LAN.

I've had it running for a while as a standalone, but ideally I would like to have the PFSense running as a VM on that hardware, and Windows also running as a VM so I can use the fast 10Gb card to backup to the SSD's.

How would I set things up so that I can use the Realtek NIC for connecting to the ProxMox host, set up PFsense with two sets aggregated ports (and it's own SSD) acting as the DHCP for the entire network, and finally have the 10Gb dedicated to the Windows VM (on it's own SSD)?

Everything I've tried so far means I'm either only getting Gigabit internet and fast LAN transfers, or 1.2Gigabit internet and can't use the machine for anything else.

 

[bobmc]

The dual ported ISP modem is something I've not heard of before but I would approach this by creating a bond on two of the Intel NIC's and then create a bridge on this bond to provide the WAN connection to the pfsense VM. I would probably create two or three more bridges on the remaining Intel NIC's and and the Mellanox Adaptor, finally I would use the Realtek purely for management of the proxmox host.

I personally wouldn't dedicate SSD's to individual VM's. I would be more inclined to create an SSD Mirror or SSD Striped-Mirror for VM Storage as this would be more flexible and fault-tolerant and may even provide better performance

 

[Stumplington]

Thanks for the suggestions!

I've tried pretty much all day with no success.

Here's what it looks like after endless tinkering and reinstalls. I cannot seem to be able to choose either bond as an interface for the PFsense VM. All it offers is vmbr0. Other VM's I have tried to install do the same thing.

I just want to be able to boot a VM, tell it which physical interfaces it has access to - and aggregate those if needed. I'm quite out of my league here and will probably end up buying a new machine just to host the 4 port card and the PFsense install - because I can at least get that working

 

[bobmc]

It should look something like this